Aneek Chaudhari's 'White': A silent film that dares to talk about the consequences of rape

After a return from Cannes with his last feature film The Wife's Letter, director AneekChaudhuri turns to act more for the society than for himself. His last film although was more of an egoist attempt, his current film White speaks about the universal topic of rape; more importantly, this is a silent motion picture with a duration of around 75 minutes. The first look of this film was currently launched at Toronto International Film Festival.

White is a film that combines three tales with the common theme of rape. The first story speaks of a factory worker, the second story speaks of a single mother and the third story is of a married couple where the wife gets raped. The region of production is Bengal and the actors starring in it are from the very state.

White is silent due to two major facts i.e. the consequences of rape are not to be spoken about and this is a silent struggle for those who get raped and secondly, this film aims at keeping no language barrier in the field of World Cinema since this is a universal topic.

As quoted by the director, "White speaks of a ray of optimism that always appears in darkness. And women being the ones always bearing the brunt of many things in this society, have grown this instinct of surviving and fighting the most dreadful situations. Rape is certainly one of them."

As per him, India is a country which has been reporting cases of women related crimes quite often; however, this film is about the fight that comes afterwards. Three women leading their lives differently all of a sudden grows something in common and tries to come out of it in their own unique way.

The film is silent symbolising the nature of struggle that runs within a person and needs not to be expressed in words.

White, according to Aneek, is another step where he has been trying to eliminate the usage of language and give a touch of universality to topics that require attention. It is believed that the silent nature of the film would make it more approachable to world audiences.

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Murtaza Ali Khan is an independent film critic / journalist based out of New Delhi, India. He has been writing on cinema for over seven years. He runs the award-winning entertainment blog A Potpourri of Vestiges. He is also the Films Editor at the New York City-based publication Cafe Dissensus and regularly contributes to The Hindu and The Sunday Guardian. He was previously a columnist at Huff Post. He has also contributed to publications like DailyO, Newslaundry, The Quint, Dear Cinema, Desimartini and Jamuura Blog. He regularly appears as a guest panelist on the various television channels and is also associated with radio.